FAU to add medical club, more events for Jupiter and Davie campuses

Last week, six members of the Boca campus Student Government Senate voted unanimously on every bill that was proposed.

One will create a Medical Student Association at FAU’s College of Medicine, which will be open to both undergraduate and graduate students, and another will change how Program Board, an SG-run program that organizes events for students, is funded and run. SG hopes that creating specific Boards for each campus instead of managing one overarching system will lead to more events for the Boca, Jupiter, and Davie communities.

The first bill came about through irritation.

“We’ve encountered a lot of difficulty with the convoluted process of getting approved [for] events,” medical student Sanjay Chandrasekhar said. Because of that, the medical student community is looking for “autonomy.”

The bill, authored by medical students Jeremy Cohen and Chandrasekhar, states that the Graduate and Professional Student Association “has historically approved funding for only 13 organizations.”

This low approval rate forces medical groups to become subgroups of existing organizations, which “prevents them from achieving the autonomy and funding needed to successfully impact the students,” it added.

Rep. Cody Steed and Rep. Joseph Burgese sponsored the bill.

The second bill will make changes to Program Board despite FAU’s Board of Trustees, a university policy-governing group, rejecting it.

Vice President Marianne Alex said that the bill’s dismissal was due to insufficient “finance details on the job descriptions.”

Campus governors will now be required to appoint a Program Board director for each campus, and each governor will be given separate funding for the organization. Currently, Program Board is a university-wide program without specific campus representatives.

Steed believes having campus representatives is more “fair” for the other campuses aside from Boca.

“If the Board of Trustees doesn’t support what the students support, that’s their decision,” Steed said. “However, I was elected by the students and this amendment was supported by over 80 percent of the students.”

According to the bill, 81.5 percent of students who voted opted to pass this bill during the Fall election.

Kristen Grau is a staff writer with the University Press. For questions regarding this or other stories, email kgrau2016@fau.edu.

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